Human-wildlife conflict solutions

Made it!

It’s a 3 hour drive to the village along a pretty ropey road. The road is repaired every couple of years but never properly, so it quickly gets washed away in the heavy rains and is pitted with enormous potholes. Large sections of it are just mud too and it’s only one lane wide with lorries and minibuses tearing along, so it’s pretty hairy! But the views are awesome and it’s worth the bone-shaking!

I arrived late last night. A load of the local lads came to meet me and help get my luggage in to the house. I’m staying in the house I always stay in which is nice – in this village it is a concrete house, rather than a wooden stilt house. It’s still fairly basic though but they have renovated a bit since last year and laid some tiles on the concrete floor and painted it nice bright colours 🙂 I have my own little wooden bed and mattress with a big mosquito net to keep out the creepy crawlies and pretty soon it will feel like home again.

It’s been raining a lot so the humidity’s high and everything feels damp which means night times are actually relatively cool (in a stuffy kinda way!).

I spent today catching up with people in the village, especially some of the women who I’ve known for almost 12 years. Sadly one of them lost her husband suddenly a few months ago so we had a long chat. Luckily she has a little stall in the village to bring in some income for her and her 3 young children, on top of her farm, but it’s going to be hard for her to manage alone. Of course when the monkeys raid her crops it will be even harder – it really brings home the day to day struggles these people have and makes me even more determined to find a workable solution to the monkeys’ crop-raiding so that the monkeys can live in peace and the people can too!